


Alison from Palmdale

by viggorlijah



Series: Twenty-three things that did not happen to John Connor [4]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:59:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viggorlijah/pseuds/viggorlijah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't Blade Runner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alison from Palmdale

There is no glitch. There is a deliberate cascade of code that writes over and over sectors until Cameron Baum falls onto the ground and shakes and falls into a final sleep.

She wakes up Alison Young. She wakes up screaming.

Sarah Connor ties her to a bedframe with chains. She breaks them and runs. They chase her and they shoot her until the pain knocks her out and she wakes up chained again, Derek Reese in a chair pulled up to her side with a gun across his lap.

"Alison," he says. "It's 2008. Judgement Day hasn't arrived yet."

Hot tears spill down her face. "No J-Day?" she whispers.

Reese smoothes her hair back. "No J-Day," he says, smiling. "Not yet.

It takes three days and her carving open her chest before she believes them. Derek takes her outside into the garden and she watches the sun rise and set. Sarah Connor brings her slices of pizza and pancakes and chocolate bars, and after dusk, John Connor sits next to her on the grass to look at the stars.

"You could be Alison Young," he says after a while. "We can find you a place where you would be safe."

She closes her eyes and imagines the world spinning under her. Imagines all the six billion people sleeping and waking and alive.

"No," she says. "Nowhere's safe. And I'm not Alison Young anymore."

She sits up and uncurls her hands. When she thinks a certain way, like she's trying to squint but with her eyes wide open, a display appears over her vision. John Connor's face is mapped out in dots and lines scatter across, charting his heartrate, his temperature - "I can count how fast you blink," she says, fascinated. "Did you know I could do that?"

She cuts her hair short and wears bright colors, little floaty dresses and heels with flowers on the straps. She can break open steel doors with her fists and she never needs to sleep. Instead, she splits watch shifts with Derek and Sarah, and sometimes she sneaks out to the movies with John Connor.

She can't make her body work the same way the other one did, but she makes herself dance and run and shoot until she owns it, this body of flesh and metal. Her memories are hard to find, each day slipping away, but she remembers the future and her past, and when it echoes in her head - when it's Cameron's memories like the cold of dry ice, she watches John Connor until the memories go away.

When Judgement Day comes, she's in New Mexico, hiking down a canyon with John, and when they reach the river below, she splashes water on him and he laughs. Her reflection ripples and she's still sixteen, he's thirty-two, and there's no-one to see when she pushes him into the shallows and kisses him, no-one to say anything when Connor and his metal bitch laugh and make love. Because Alison Young grew up in Palmdale, and she's at college, she had a life, and when the sky lights up that night and John weeps silently, Alison Connor watches them and thinks of all the ways she'll give her a future.


End file.
